


Cherry Kisses

by Kayasurin



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: And not one of the prompts, But at least I tried, Cherry Stem Test, Implied Smut, Kissing, Late for Jackrabbit week, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayasurin/pseuds/Kayasurin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack took the test because he was bored (and managed to get a high score, thank you) but Bunny's a little put out at how badly he did. And then he and Jack discuss their results in private.</p><p>AKA the cherry stem test leads to kissing and other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherry Kisses

"... Jack?"

Aster narrowed his eyes, and tilted one ear towards Tooth without actually looking away from the Frostbite. Apparently he wasn't the only one to notice Frost's distraction.

"Mm?" Jack looked up from his bowl of cherries, and smiled. "What's up, Tooth?"

Sandy immediately began running through everything from the roof, to balloons, to the stars in the sky. It wasn't that everyone ignored him, it was just that everyone was used to his flights of random and strange, and he was used to taking those flights alone. Occasionally Jack gave the elves espresso- "Coffee with attitude," he'd say, and laugh- and they'd join Sandy- or at least, bounce off the walls, quite literally, jibbering a mile a minute and entertaining the Dreamweaver, so same difference.

Tooth smiled. "What are you doing with the stems?"

Yes, what _was_ Frost doing with the stems?

Jack grinned, and picked up a cherry stem, twirled it between his fingers a few times, and then popped it in his mouth. He made a few absurd expressions, clearly doing _something_ with his tongue and teeth and the stem, but it wasn't clear _what_.

Then he spat out the stem, covered in drool and knotted in the middle.

The others all leaned closer, looking varying degrees of interested. Aster leaned back instead, ears angled back and arms folded. Oh. That.

... Bloody, buggering bastard. Of course _that_.

"Oh, I want to try," Tooth said, and plucked a cherry out of the bowl. North grabbed a handful.

"Will be easy," he said, and winked at the table. "If Jack can do it with tiny little tongue, than big, muscular, _Russian_ tongue will make easy pea soup of knotting stem, yes?"

"Easy peasy," Jack said, sounding far too amused.

"Cannot eat peasy. What even is peasy?" North waved it off, and then popped a cherry in his mouth. Tooth was already working at her stem, gigging every other second.

Sandy declined the cherry, but took the stem, and a few seconds later held it out. It'd been knotted in- well, it looked like a bit of Celtic nonsense.

Jack laughed at him. "You cheated, Sandy. You must've used your sand or something- oh no, halos do not make you innocent. Especially not a half-dozen of them!"

Sandy fluttered his eyelashes. Jack laughed harder. Even Aster couldn't help but crack a smile.

North and Tooth gave up on their efforts after five minutes, laughed at Sandy's work of art, and then eyed Aster.

"Not interested?" Tooth asked.

Jack waved one hand before the Pooka could reply. "Oh, come on, could you really see Mr. Serious-butt playing this kind of game?"

"Wh- _what'd_ you call me?" Serious-butt? Aster grabbed a cherry out of the bowl, and popped it into his mouth. It tasted sour. He ate the cherry quickly, and then began working at the stem with his tongue.

He gave up only when the stem began to fray. He spat it out into the palm of his hand, and sneered at it. "Stupid game, anyways," he muttered, and tossed the stem into the bowl.

North shook his head, and ate the rest of his cherries. But he didn't, Aster noticed, try to tie any of the stems into knots. "What is purpose of this game?" he asked.

Aster took a moment to thank El-Ahrairah that this wasn't his home planet, his friends weren't Pooka, and this 'cherry stem game' didn't have anything to do with a similar test he and his old mates had occasionally played. Mind, Pooka hadn't had cherries back home, they'd had ywaro, but they were similar enough to cherries. Fruit, long stem, tasty if you liked sour things. Among Pooka- well, teenagers was the close enough term- being able to tie a ywaro stem into a knot with just your mouth meant you were, supposedly, very good at kissing. And other things a bit further south of the border, so to speak.

Jack smirked. "Well," he said, and picked up a cherry. He twirled it by the stem, and then popped fruit and stem both into his mouth. After a few minutes, he spat the knotted stem out, and looked smug. "It's a game teenagers play. Teenage girls, mostly. The cherry stem test. If you can knot the stem with your mouth, you're really good at kissing."

... Oh, right, El-Ahrairah was a bastard. How'd he forget that?

The others burst out laughing, while Sandy stood up on the table and began bowing dramatically. Jack also nodded his head, regal manner a bit marred by the overly large grin he was sporting.

Aster looked away, arms folded again and ears pinned back. It was just a stupid test. It didn't mean _anything_.

* * *

Jack raised one eyebrow at the light on in the kitchen, and then walked carefully over. If it was Darlene doing some late night baking, he really didn't want to startle her. Shy little thing, for all that she was a yeti and capable of picking up and throwing a Mac truck at anyone who annoyed her. If, however, it was one of the elves trying to sneak some sugar, well... Jack was a fan of chaos, yeah, but at certain times and places. Oh-god-dark at night, or what-the-fuck-time-is-it in the morning? Not so much. Just because Jack couldn't sleep didn't mean everyone else should be awake.

Of course, if it was Darlene, he could probably beg some hot cocoa and sugar cookies from her. His family had never had cocoa of any kind, but the cookies? Tasted just like the ones his mom had made. The only reason he didn't get choked up eating Darlene's was because they were too good to waste.

Jack peered carefully through the half-open door, and frowned. No shy yeti-woman with a mixing bowl or at the oven. No elves ransacking the cupboards looking for sugar, and cleaning up after themselves.

Not for the first time, he really had to wonder if North's elves were related to the European Brownies, who'd done chores for humans in exchange for food and shelter (and being ignored). Only, you know, bigger, a bit crazier, and obsessed with food. It'd certainly explain why the elves were completely covered in fabric, with only their hands and faces showing.

Still, the kitchen appeared empty, so why were the lights on? He'd been moving as quietly as he knew how- and as someone who'd grown up taught to stalk both sheep and deer, armed with shepherds crook and bow and arrows, well, that was quiet indeed. If he hadn't been quiet, he, and his family, would have starved. So he'd certainly been too quiet to warn anyone that he was approaching.

There was a faint clinking sound, that of pottery knocking against pottery, from the pantry. Jack stiffened, and then slid into the kitchen, ghosting over the terracotta tiles to an odd little corner set into one wall. It'd been a door once, maybe a window considering how narrow it was, closed up after the Workshop had been expanded again. It was just the right size for one small and slender young man to stand in and be hidden from casual view.

Elves didn't bother going into the pantry. A yeti wouldn't bother with trying to be quiet; ditto with North, who sometimes sang quietly when he was rummaging about. Jack- well, obviously Jack wasn't the one in the pantry, but he never bothered being quiet either. The yeti had only ever thrown him out of the _Workshop_ , not the _living quarters_.

He wondered, sometimes, how North had never noticed how that one guest suite had been changed over to permanent living quarters, or, well... it wasn't like Jack had ever been entirely _subtle_ about living up here through North America's summer months.

The Guardians were oblivious, that was all he could figure on.

So, who was sneaking around in the kitchen pantry, and why?

Well, as to the first question... Jack stiffened when Bunny walked out of the pantry, nearly as silent as Jack himself. Rabbit feet, with their claws that went click-click on the tile, weren't quite as quiet as, say, bare human feet without claws to betray one's footsteps.

What was Bunny doing here? Carrying a pottery bowl from the pantry? Jack frowned, watching intently as Bunny set the bowl down on the kitchen table, then pulled up a stool. Of course, his interest was only partly due to the whole 'what is Bunny up to?' question. The rest of it, well...

He beat down the shameful curl of guilt with expert practice. One thing about living longer than, say, mortals, you had a while to re-examine your views. The stick in the mud who refused to change descended into either murderous rage or a depressed fugue, and the end result was always the same. Death, death and fading away, and general misery. Jack, on the other hand, embraced change, which was why he knew what Tivo was, how to program computers and make mods for said computer games, and what spam was.

Both the meat and the junk email.

Maybe being interested in other guys was wrong when Jack had been born, and maybe there were plenty of homophobic people in the world still, but strides had been made and anyways, they were spirits. Being picky about gender was kind of like being picky about your food.

The fur thing... Well maybe that was a bit questionable as an interest, but it wasn't like he'd do anything about it. Bunny wasn't interested.

Jack frowned, and dragged his wandering attention back to the question at hand. Bunny reached into the bowl and pulled out... eh... a long-stemmed cherry?

The Pooka pulled the stem off the fruit, and then tossed the bleeding cherry back into the bowl. And _then_ he placed the stem on his tongue, and began to chew on it?

No... He was trying to tie the stem in a knot.

And failed, obviously. Bunny spat out a frayed and spit covered stem, sneered, and tossed it down onto the tabletop. Then he picked up another cherry and repeated the process.

After three more failed attempts, Jack couldn't take it anymore. He sauntered forward from his hiding place, and then leaned against the table, hipshot and smiling. "You're going to wash the table when you're done, right?"

Bunny about jumped out of his _skin_. "Frostbite!" he gasped, one hand pressed to his heart- lower and off to the side, as compared to, say, a human- and the other clutching the table edge for balance. "You- when- what?"

Jack grinned wider, and shrugged one shoulder. "So, what're you up to?" he poked one finger against the small pile of spit-covered cherry stems. "Not that test from earlier, is it?"

Bunny growled at him, a surprisingly dangerous sound from someone who resembled a rabbit so much. "None of your business."

"No?" Jack pretended to recoil from surprise, and mocked an exaggerated expression of shock. "But- but you're the one who snuck in here, in the middle of the night, to... what, chew on some cherry stems?"

"Well what're you doing here?"

"I live here. Have for... gah, going on close to two hundred and fifty years. North never noticed." He shrugged one shoulder. "Still hasn't, actually."

Bunny gave him an odd look. "You... live here?"

"Sure. Tree branches and snow banks are bad for the back, and I think I'm adopted by the yeti. Either that or they're really lax on prisoner security and I just keep breaking out without realizing."

The rabbit aimed a smack at Jack's shoulder. He leaned out of the way, and grinned. "But no, really, what're you doing here?"

Bunny folded his arms and looked away, nose wiggling. Jack frowned at that; usually, Bunny's nose only wiggled when someone- say, _Jack_ \- bopped him there with a snowflake, or if he was...

... embarrassed.

Oh. Bunny was _embarrassed_.

Jack grinned, slow and wicked, and eyed the pile of cherry stems. There was only one reason Jack could think of, without dipping into pools of crazy he refused to touch on general principal, for someone to be trying to tie a bunch of cherry stems into a knot with their tongue.

"Bunny," he said, once he'd tamed his expression down a bit. "You were doing the cherry stem test."

"No!"

"You were!" He hopped up onto the table, and crouched there, much like a gargoyle- although one making grabby hands at Bunny, who'd gotten up from his seat and started backing away. "Oh, come on, I won't hurt you!"

"Oh no?" Bunny sneered, but there was a glimmer of unease in his eyes, and his ears were tilted backwards.

"Really! Just wanna prove to you that the test is absolute bunk."

Bunny stared at him, sneer and unease both vanishing in blank shock. "What?"

Jack shifted position, so he was sitting on the edge of the table instead of crouching, and swung his feet back and forth. "You know. Kissing."

"Kiss- are you _out of your bloody **mind**_?" Bunny backed up until he hit the wall, and then stood there, pressing against the plaster covered bricks. "You- and me- swapping spit? You've lost it, Jack!"

Jack tilted his head to the side. "I don't think so," he said. After all, there was that unstated attraction between the two of them. At first he'd put it down to the whole argument thing they'd had going on there; they'd argue over everything from the color of the sky to the best way to deal with Pitch Black, but over time the arguing had grown playful. These days, hurting each other was a rare accident, and they always found ways to apologize without actually breaking the Man Code and saying the _words_.

Without the borderline violence of their clashes, they- or Jack, at least- had started noticing their opponent in ways that were a bit more friendly. Friendlier, in fact, than mere friendship. Jack certainly didn't fantasize about what'd it'd be like to have sex with Tooth, or Sandy, or North, or any of the yeti.

So on Jack's end, at least, the friendship had a healthy dose of, well, lust, to put it bluntly. And, the very few times he dwelled on the situation, he had to admit he was kind of afraid. Friendship and lust could easily turn to, say, _love_.

"So," he said, once the silence had dragged on. "Going to let a test from a t'ween magazine say you're a bad kisser?" he asked, and poked the pile of soggy cherry stems again.

Bunny snarled, and stalked forward. He grabbed hold of Jack's shoulders in a grip just this side of bruising, and then jerked the winter sprite forwards and up, and smashed their lips together.

The kiss was vicious, more of a fight than any of their previous arguments had ever been. Jack grunted, and then kissed back.

It was awkward, with the different facial shapes. After all, Jack had the classic human profile, with a mostly flat face but with a jutting nose, while Bunny had a muzzle. A very short one, granted, but still. Muzzle.

And Bunny seemed determined to ignore those differences, which meant he was mostly kissing the corner of Jack's mouth. Jack reached up and got a double handful of the fluff to either side of Bunny's face, and tugged and pushed until he'd repositioned the rabbit's head, and then tilted his own face so that they were kissing, more or less, squarely on the lips.

It was still a hard, demanding kiss- and wow, Jack had not realized he'd like that this much- but much less awkward.

Eventually, though, they both had to breathe. Bunny pulled back, and Jack let him.

They stared at each other. Jack had no idea what Bunny saw, but the rabbit looked...

He licked his lips, and ducked his head so he was looking at Bunny from under his bangs. There was a wild and feral look in the rabbit's eyes, more predatory than anything, and Bunny's lips kept twitching, revealing hints of buck teeth and a lolling red tongue.

Jack shifted slightly, one hand letting go of Bunny's fur and moving until he could touch his bruised and puffy lips with the tips of his fingers. Wow. Yeah.

"You're a good kisser," he assured Bunny. "Very good. No doubt."

Bunny growled, and moved forward again. His hands pressed against the table, close enough his forearms were tight against Jack's hips, bracketing him, holding him in place.

That, too, was hotter than he'd expected.

"We had a similar test," Bunny said, voice low and growling and Jack realized he was arching his back only when the rabbit smirked. "Back home. 'Course, it was a measure of a similar, but more intimate skill."

It took Jack a minute, but then his eyes widened as he realized what Bunny was talking about. "Well," he said, carefully. "I'm hardly any kind of judge, but..."

The feral light in Bunny's eyes got brighter. "But?" he prompted.

Jack did his best to shrug nonchalantly. "If you wanna demonstrate," he said. "I sure wouldn't turn you away. You know. Just to put any lingering doubts," he glanced at the bowl of cherries, "to rest."

Bunny chuckled, and looked down at Jack's lap. "Pants are in the way."

Jack managed to wiggle out of them without, actually, moving. Bunny's fur was soft and warm against his skin, and he was having trouble catching his breath.

And then Bunny went down onto one knee, so his head was level with Jack's waist.

Jack never had learnt to keep his thoughts behind his teeth. He couldn't help it; he chuckled, and when Bunny looked up, said, "Now we _really_ have to wash the table."

Bunny smirked, and leaned forward. And Jack stopped thinking entirely.

In the end, they moved to Jack's room, and forgot about the table entirely. That was okay. It wasn't like anyone had used it for anything the past century, anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wanted to do Jackrabbit week, but alas, I suck at time management. So, here, have a oneshot not actually related to any of the Jackrabbit week prompts, and a bit late.
> 
> Edit: Lampira7 translated the story into Polish: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11831858/1/Wi%C5%9Bniowe-poca%C5%82unki


End file.
